Ce train qui s'en va

On the metro, I like to prop my elbow on the window ledge, rest my head against my fist, and let my whole body lean sideways against the wall of the car. In this position my body goes completely loose, and all my senses are free to take in everything around me.

The train slowly pulls out of Lionel-Groulx station. The vast, open space of the two-level station before my eyes, the people hurrying through it, the announcements echoing over the speakers—all of it, every last thing, begins to fall back and blur, faster and faster, and in its place comes that shrill screech, so particular to Montreal, of rubber tires grinding against the track. At first this warping of the world around me is slow, but soon it speeds up until it is almost dizzying. It truly feels as though it were my youth slipping away, ever faster, along with all the time I have already lived through.

I think of how I have just said goodbye to my girlfriend, how I stood on the platform stealing glances at her figure as it vanished into the train across the way, speeding off in the opposite direction. Perhaps, in that moment, she saw me the way I now see the other passengers left behind on the platform. This strange feeling, along with the faint trembling of the car, sets me thinking, almost without my noticing, about my future. Will my studies go smoothly? Will the friends around me always be there, or will we end up scattered to the four corners of the earth? Will we break up? Will my family stay healthy? Will something unexpected befall us…

Soon the train plunges into the pitch-black tunnel, and in that instant everything disappears. Only the tunnel lights, flaring up every so often, let the signs on the tunnel wall flash before my eyes. The signs say nothing more than which station the train has just left and which station it is heading toward. Again and again they appear in an instant and vanish in an instant, as if forever reminding me that this journey is not some endless thing with neither beginning nor end: I have already said goodbye to everyone at the last station, and one day I will get off at another. Perhaps in life, too, we are always doing just this—glancing quickly back at our past, then ahead at our future—only so fast that we don’t even realize it ourselves.

The darkness outside the window has swallowed everything I once knew, and the shrill roar of the tires drowns out the chatter that filled the car. It is as if I were the only person left between heaven and earth. The rush of air from the speeding train suddenly makes me feel a little cold, and I think: my parents, my friends, they will all leave in the end. On the journey of life, perhaps the only one who can walk with me all the way to the end is myself. But am I ready to face all of this alone, once they are gone? Or will I, in the end, find someone else to walk beside me for the rest of my life…

I know that the moment to say goodbye always comes. It’s just that we would rather not face it.